Six people managed forty blocks and every leak, lift fault, parking dispute and service-charge query came into the same inbox. Urgent things waited behind routine ones, contractors were called out over budget because nobody could find the limit, and directors heard about problems from residents before they heard from the agent. They wanted every query triaged the moment it arrived and every director informed first.
Three things kept going wrong, and each cost the business time, money or a customer.
Three agents built on the agent's block management system, with each block's contractor list, budget limits and director contacts already in it, and a property manager approving anything above a block's agreed spend.
The block management system already held every property, lease, budget and contractor, which is why fifteen days was enough. The property managers wrote the urgency rules together: water, electricity, lifts and security are always urgent; everything else has a grade. For the first two weeks the intake agent filed and graded while the team worked the inbox as before, so they could see whether it agreed with them. It disagreed rarely, and mostly by grading things more urgent than a tired person would have. Dispatch was switched on in week three, with approvals for anything above each block's limit.
A resident who reports a leak gets a reference and a contractor time within minutes, at any hour, and the property manager sees it graded and filed rather than buried. Contractors are booked within budget or not at all without a manager's yes. Directors receive a briefing when something matters, before the WhatsApp group has finished discussing it. The team of six manages the same forty blocks and has stopped talking about hiring a seventh.
'The inbox used to be the job. Now the job is the buildings again, and the inbox just tells us what it's done.'
Head of property management
Maintenance requests came in by phone, email and text and were tracked on a whiteboard. Tenants chased for updates, contractors turned up unannounced, and gas certificates lapsed twice in a year.
Portal enquiries landed in a shared inbox in bursts, mostly evenings and weekends, and negotiators worked through them on Monday morning. By then the keen buyers had booked with the agency across the road. They wanted every enquiry answered within minutes, qualified, and in the diary.
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